By Michael G. Findley, Daniel L. Nielson & J. C. Sharman

Every year a staggering number of unidentified shell corporations succeed in hiding perpetrators of terrorist financing, corruption and illegal arms trades, but the degree to which firms flout global identification standards remains unknown. Adopting a unique, experimental methodology, Global Shell Games attempts to unveil the sordid world of anonymous shell corporations. Posing as twenty-one different international consultants, the authors approached nearly 4,000 services in over 180 countries to discover just how easy it is to form an untraceable company. Combining rigorous quantitative analysis, qualitative investigation of responses and lurid news reports, this book makes a significant research contribution to compliance with international law and international crime and terrorism whilst offering a novel, new approach to the field of political science research.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 250p.

By Joseph D. Serio

In the 1990s, the so-called Russian mafia dominated newspaper headlines, political analysis, and academic articles around the world. It was the new scourge, a threat so massive that it was believed to hold the Russian economy hostage. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh announced that the Russian mafia was a significant threat to the national security of the United States.

Before the end of the decade, Director Freeh reversed himself, saying that in reality the magnitude of the danger from the Russian mafia had been overestimated. Heading into the new millennium, the international hue and cry about gangsters from the former Soviet Union subsided dramatically, particularly after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Al-Qaeda shifted the spotlight from organized crime to terrorism and U.S. homeland security. Has the Russian mafia been eradicated or has it simply fallen below the radar?

Countless books and articles have reported on the Russian mafia in breathless terms bordering on hysteria. Casting a broad net, Serio brings a different, more analytical approach to his exploration of the subject. In Investigating the Russian Mafia, Part I begins by asking a series of basic questions: What did the Soviets understand 'mafia' to mean? Was this a Russian phenomenon or more broadly-based, multi-ethnic groups? How did the media influence the perception of the Russian mafia? What does a close examination of the official statistics reveal about the nature of crime groups in the former Soviet Union?

In Part II, Serio discusses an overview of attitudes and practices of the criminal world, business, and policing, among others, in Russian history. He demonstrates that many of the forces at work in the 1990s did not originate in the Communist era or arise because of the collapse of the USSR. Part III presents a discussion of the crime groups that developed in the post-Soviet era, the challenges that faced the business world, and the law enforcement response.

Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2008. 324p.

By Anthony DeStefano

He was the last of his kind-an old-world mob boss steeped in omert , the mob code of silence. While his arrogant friend John Gotti was being secretly recorded by the FBI, Joseph Massino, head of the Bonanno family, quietly became known as "The Ear" by ordering his men to point to their ear instead of saying his name out loud.

For more than twenty years Massino ran what was called the largest criminal network in the U.S., employing over 250 made men and untold numbers of associates. The Bonanno family was responsible for over 30 murders, even killing a dozen of its own members to settle scores. Massino ran a tight organization, obsessively checking his social club for bugging devices, frustrating FBI surveillance. But in the end Massino would be brought down from the inside, by the underboss who was not only his closest and most trusted friend—but a member of his blood family.

Based on exclusive interviews with Massino's family and closest associates, as well as law enforcement officials and confidential sources, The Last Godfather is an epic inside story from Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Anthony DeStefano.

New York: Kensington Publishing, 2006. 351p.

By Grace Kena and Jennifer L. Truman 

This report describes trends and patterns in fatal and nonfatal firearm violence from 1993 to 2018 and for the more recent period of 2014 to 2018. The report includes data on the type of firearm; location of the incident; victim and offender demographic characteristics and relationship; type of violence, injury, and treatment; police notification; and victims’ self-protective behaviors.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Crime Statistics, 2022. 26p.

By Chris A Rees . Michael C Monuteaux , Isabella Steidley, Rebekah Mannix , Lois K Lee , Jefferson T Barrett , and Eric W Fleegler

Firearm fatality rates in the United States have reached a 28-year high. Describing the evolution of firearm fatality rates across intents, demographics, and geography over time may highlight high-risk groups and inform interventions for firearm injury prevention.

Objective: To understand variations in rates of firearm fatalities stratified by intent, demographics, and geography in the US.

Design, setting, and participants: This cross-sectional study analyzed firearm fatalities in the US from 1990 to 2021 using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heat maps, maximum and mean fatality rate graphs, and choropleth maps of county-level rates were created to examine trends in firearm fatality rates by intent over time by age, sex, race, ethnicity, and urbanicity of individuals who died from firearms. Data were analyzed from December 2018 through September 2022.

Main outcomes and measures: Rates of firearm fatalities by age, sex, race, ethnicity, urbanicity, and county of individuals killed stratified by specific intent (suicide or homicide) per 100 000 persons per year.

Results: There were a total of 1 110 421 firearm fatalities from 1990 to 2021 (952 984 among males [85.8%] and 157 165 among females [14.2%]; 286 075 among Black non-Hispanic individuals [25.8%], 115 616 among Hispanic individuals [10.4%], and 672 132 among White non-Hispanic individuals [60.5%]). All-intents total firearm fatality rates per 100 000 persons declined to a low of 10.1 fatalities in 2004, then increased to 14.7 fatalities (45.5% increase) by 2021. From 2014 to 2021, male and female firearm homicide rates per 100 000 persons per year increased from 5.9 to 10.9 fatalities (84.7% increase) and 1.1 to 2.0 fatalities (87.0% increase), respectively. Firearm suicide rates were highest among White non-Hispanic men aged 80 to 84 years (up to 46.8 fatalities/100 000 persons in 2021). By 2021, maximum rates of firearm homicide were up to 22.5 times higher among Black non-Hispanic men (up to 141.8 fatalities/100 000 persons aged 20-24 years) and up to 3.6 times higher among Hispanic men (up to 22.8 fatalities/100 000 persons aged 20-24 years) compared with White non-Hispanic men (up to 6.3 fatalities/100 000 persons aged 30-34 years). Males had higher rates of suicide (14.1 fatalities vs 2.0 fatalities per 100 000 persons in 2021) and homicide (10.9 fatalities vs. 2.0 fatalities per 100 000 persons in 2021) compared with females. Metropolitan areas had higher homicide rates than nonmetropolitan areas (6.6 fatalities vs 4.8 fatalities per 100 000 persons in 2021). Firearm fatalities by county level increased over time, spreading from the West to the South. From 1999 to 2011 until 2014 to 2016, fatalities per 100 000 persons per year decreased from 10.6 to 10.5 fatalities in Western states and increased from 12.8 to 13.9 fatalities in Southern states.

Conclusions and relevance: This study found marked disparities in firearm fatality rates by demographic group, which increased over the past decade. These findings suggest that public health approaches to reduce firearm violence should consider underlying demographic and geographic trends and differences by intent.

JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Nov 1;5(11):e2244221. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.44221. PMID: 36445703; PMCID: PMC9709653.

Edited by Graeme R. Newman

The assembled papers identify many serious shortcomings and failings of past comparative research on deviance and crime. In addition, they point to some crime correlates that appear to be found throughout the world, including broken homes, unemployment, urbanization, and industrialization. Individual papers examine the possibility of using international categories in international crime statistics, study cross-cultural perceptions of deviance, and note special problems that may arise for researchers studying crime in Marxist countries with particular emphasis on Cuba. Two approaches to comparative criminology are reviewed: the first consists of confirming universal data and constructs in different juridical, economical, and cultural systems; the second consists of using different cultures in a natural experimental design, or as quasi-clinical cases, in order to test general theories. Other papers explore the historical perspective concerning the role of subcultures in criminology, the informal social control of deviance, and some correlates of social deviance and their relationship to a recent theory of personality. In addition, aspects of comparative criminology involving such relatively recent phenomena as transnational terrorism and large-scale multinational economic crimes are considered. Tabular data, footnotes, and references are provided.

California. Sage. 1980. 385p.

By World Economic Forum

From the Preface: "The 2023 edition of the 'Global Risks Report' highlights the multiple areas where the world is at a critical inflection point. It is a call to action, to collectively prepare for the next crisis the world may face and, in doing so, shape a pathway to a more stable, resilient world."

World Economic Forum: www.weforum.org/. 2023. 98p.

By Ben Spevack

Shared Skies contains new research, carried out by C4ADS, exploring the overlap of methods and routes used in wildlife trafficking and other illicit smuggling crimes such as drugs and weapons. Using this analysis, it gives recommendations to aviation and enforcement agencies on how to strengthen mitigation of wildlife trafficking and the wider spectrum of transnational crime.

An assessment of the routes, networks and methods used for trafficking wildlife and other illicit goods such as drugs and weapons between 2015-2019 shows a high degree of interconnection, which if addressed could prove hugely beneficial to disrupting illicit activities.

Our previous report, Runway to Extinction, touched on the idea that non-wildlife trafficking operations exploit the same vulnerabilities in systems of communication, finance and transport as wildlife traffickers. By taking a closer look at the points of convergence between illicit trades, Shared Skies identifies five levels at which this convergence may occur: shipment, organization, route, hub (such as an airport or city) and jurisdiction, and advises on how this information can be leveraged to disrupt criminal activities across aviation.

The recommendations fall into three broad categories: improving collection and reporting of seizure data; increasing collaboration between aviation and enforcement stakeholders in addressing convergence; and refining mitigation activities to address all illicit commodity types.

Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Defense Studies, 2021. 21p.

Edited by Mangai Natarajan

International crime and justice is an emerging field that covers crime and justice from a global perspective. 'This book introduces the nature of internationaland transnational crimes; theoretical foundations to understanding the relationship between social change and the waxing and waning of the crime opportunity structure; globalization; migration; culture conflicts and the emerging legal frameworks for their prevention and control. tI presents the challenges involved in delivering justice and international cooperative efforts to deter, detect, and respond to international and transnational crimes, and the need for international research and data resources to go beyond anecdote and impres- sionistic accounts to testing and developing theories to build the discipline that bring tangible improvements to the peace, security, and well-being of the globalizing world. 'This books is a timely analysis of the complex subject ofinternational crime and justice for students, scholars, policy makers, and advocates who strive for the pursuit of justice for millions of victims.

Cambridge England and NY.. Cambridge University Press. 2019. 560p.

By Scott M. Deitche

From Chapter 1: To trace the start of traditional organized crime (the mob, the syndicate, the Mafia) in New Jersey, you could begin in a few cities around the state where new immigrant groups at the turn of the twentieth century fell victim to extortion gangs and police indifference. It was in these tight-knit immigrant neighborhoods where the strands and threads of organized-crime groups began. But if there was one focal point, one birthplace where originated the larger, more influential crime figures who would shape both the underworld and overall history of the state through much of the twentieth century, it would be Newark.

London. Rowman & Littlefield. 2018. 299p.

By INTERPOL and ENACT Africa

With the increase in Internet coverage, online trade of illicit goods is likely increasing on the African continent. In recent years, cyber-enabled crimes have increased on the African continent. This has been a result of a combination of factors, including, the improvement of Internet coverage, the wide availability of cyber-tools and the growing flexibility of cybercriminals. As a consequence, online crime nowadays represents a bigger security issue for law enforcement in African member countries than ever before. In this framework, INTERPOL, under the European Union funded ENACT Project, examines through this assessment the issue of cyber and cyber-enabled crimes in Africa in order to help drive a more strategic law enforcement response.

Lyon, France: INTERPOL; ENACT AFRICA, 2020. 79p.

By John Kleinig, Peter Mameli, Seumas Miller, Douglas Salane and Adina Schwartz

This study is principally concerned with the ethical dimensions of identity management technology – electronic surveillance, the mining of personal data, and profiling – in the context of transnational crime and global terrorism. The ethical challenge at the heart of this study is to establish an acceptable and sustainable equilibrium between two central moral values in contemporary liberal democracies, namely, security and privacy. Both values are essential to individual liberty, but they come into conflict in times when civil order is threatened, as has been the case from late in the twentieth century, with the advent of global terrorism and trans-national crime. We seek to articulate legally sustainable, politically possible, and technologically feasible, global ethical standards for identity management technology and policies in liberal democracies in the contemporary global security context. Although the standards in question are to be understood as global ethical standards potentially to be adopted not only by the United States, but also by the European Union, India, Australasia, and other contemporary liberal democratic states, we take as our primary focus the tensions that have arisen between the United States and the European Union.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2011. 304p.

By Elisa-Sofía García-Marcano

In recent years, two apparently different and unconnected problems have received repeated attention from global news outlets, namely the opioid crisis and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The opioid crisis, which is especially catastrophic in the United States, involves the over-prescription and abuse of synthetic opioid painkillers such as oxycontin and fentanyl (Felter, 2020). The pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong involves legions of protesters, many of them university students, taking to the streets against what they see as the erosion of their civil liberties at the hands of the mainland Chinese government (Perper, 2019). How can these two issues possibly be connected? This paper tells the story of how the world's first great opioid crisis occurred in nineteenth-century China, and how the drug trafficking British thwarted the Chinese government's attempts to stop drug imports, fighting two wars in the process. Upon conclusion of the first of these wars, China was forced to cede the territory of Hong Kong. This British colonial outpost became the principal entrepôt for British opium entering the Chinese market. Over the next century and a half, Hong Kong grew into one of the world's most dynamic commercial cities, and its citizens enjoyed liberties under British rule that were not available to the mainland Chinese population. Thus, the legacy of the opium wars and the British opium trade to China is still very much with us today.

 Online Journal Mundo Asia Pacifico, 10(19), 98–109. 

By W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello

In this tragic and powerful story, the two Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856–1860 between Britain and China are recounted for the first time through the eyes of the Chinese as well as the Imperial West. Opium entered China during the Middle Ages when Arab traders brought it into China for medicinal purposes. As it took hold as a recreational drug, opium wrought havoc on Chinese society. By the early nineteenth century, 90 percent of the Emperor’s court and the majority of the army were opium addicts.Britain was also a nation addicted-to tea, grown in China, and paid for with profits made from the opium trade. When China tried to ban the use of the drug and bar its Western smugglers from its gates, England decided to fight to keep open China’s ports for its importation. England, the superpower of its time, managed to do so in two wars, resulting in a drug-induced devastation of the Chinese people that would last 150 years.In this page-turning, dramatic and colorful history, The Opium Wars responds to past, biased Western accounts by representing the neglected Chinese version of the story and showing how the wars stand as one of the monumental clashes between the cultures of East and West.

Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2004.  352p.

By Maia Dolphin-Krute

An epidemic is a feeling set within time as much as it is a matter of statistics and epidemiology: it is the feeling of many of us in the same desperate place at the same desperate time. Opioid epidemic thus names a present moment — at once historic and historical — centered on the substance of opioids as much as it names the urgency of all of us who are currently in proximity to these substances. What is the relationship between these historic and historical moments, the present moment, the history of pharmacological capitalism, and a set of repeated neurological activities, as well as human loss and desire, that has fueled the exponential rise in the rates of opioid use and abuse between 2000-2018? Opioids: Addiction, Narrative, Freedom is an auto-ethnography written from deep within—biologically within—this opioid epidemic. Tracing opioids around and through the bodies, governmental, and medical structures they are moving and being moved through, Opioids is an examination of what it means to live within an environment saturated with a substance of deep economic, political, neuroscientific, and pharmacological implications. From exploring media coverage of the epidemic and emerging medical narratives of addiction to detailing the legal inscription of differences between “pain patients” and people addicted to drugs, Opioids consistently asks: what is it like to live within an epidemic? What forms of freedom become possible when continually modulated by our physical experiences of the material proximities of an epidemic? How do you live with something for a long time?

Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2018. 192p.

By Nick Robins

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles and teas. But the Company’s takeover of much of India was achieved by force and fraud; in China, the battering ram was opium. The East India Company’s corruption and violence shocked its contemporaries and still reverberates today. The Corporation That Changed the World is the first book to examine the Company’s enduring legacy as a corporation. It uncovers the factors that drove it to excess and eventual collapse. This expanded edition looks at recent activist and cultural responses to the Company in China and India, and the corporate reform agenda in light of the economic crisis. In his account of the Company's story Robins highlights enduring lessons on how to make global business accountable. This will be vital reading for students and academics in economics and history.

London: Pluto Press, 2012. 281p.

By Hans Derks

This is the first scholarly study in which the production, trade and political effects of opium and its derivatives are shown over many centuries, and in many countries (China, India, Indonesia, Japan, all Southeast Asian countries and some in Europe and the Americas). Starting in the 16th century, slavery and opium became the two means with which the bodies and souls of men and women in the tropics were exploited in western imperialism and colonialism. The first waned with the abolition movement in the 19th century, but opium production and trade continued to spread, with the associated serious social and political effects. Around 1670 the Dutch introduced opium as a cash crop for mass production and distribution in India and Indonesia. China became the main target in the 19th century, and only succeeded in getting rid of the opium problem around 1950. Then it had already been transformed from an “Eastern” into a “Western” problem.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. 850p.

By Craig Unger

'A bombshell.' Daily Mail 'Damning, terrifying and enraging.' The Spectator House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump's inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin's long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and associates had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991--that it merely evolved, with Trump's apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump's sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia's phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. 

New York: Dutton, 2018. 384p.

By Roderic Broadhurst, Matthew Ball and Harshit Trivedi

A snapshot of the sale of fentanyl and its analogues across several popular darknet markets between 2 January and 27 March 2019 reveals the amount, types and physical forms available. Of the 127,541 unique drug listings identified, 13,135 were opioids (10.3% of all drugs), of which 1,118 (0.876% of all drugs) were fentanyl or its analogues. Between 27.3 and 39.3 kilograms of fentanyl and its derivatives were available over the period. The average price of fentanyl was A$99 per gram, while carfentanil was A$26.8 per gram. The shipping methods, cross-market operations and product specialisation of the 303 active fentanyl vendors on these darknet markets are also described.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 14p.

By United States and Rand Corporation

The Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, established under Section 7221 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, was charged with examining aspects of the synthetic opioid threat to the United States—specifically, with developing a consensus on a strategic approach to combating the illegal flow of synthetic opioids into the United States. This final report describes items involving the illegal manufacturing and trafficking of synthetic opioids, as well as the deficiencies in countering their production and distribution, and includes action items directed to appropriate executive branch agencies and congressional committees and leadership. Get appendices to the report.

Rand, 2022. 148p.